LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



ifmp @up9«s¥ 'H* 

^3 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THEOSOPHY OR CHRISTIANITY 
WHICH? 



A CONTRAST 



Rev. I. M. HALDEMAN 

Pastor First Baptist Church, New -York City 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

Rev. T. DEWITT TALMAGE, D. D. 

Brooklyn 



''DEC 26 1893 \ 



NEW-YORK 
CROSCUP PUBLISHING COMPANY 
9 EAST i 7 th STREET 



A- 



Copyright, 1893, 
By Geo. E. Croscup 



All rights reserved 



INTRODUCTION 



BY 

Rev. T. DeWITT TALMAGE, D.D. 



INTRODUCTION. 



BY 




Rev. T« DeWitt Talmage, D.D. 

^OGS are not only unhealthy, 
but they distort and hide. One 
of the thickest fogs that has set- 
tled on many souls is theosophy. 
This book by Rev. I. M, Haldeman 
is a burst of sunshine scattering that fog. 

Most people have not time to go through the 
literature on the subject. The author of this 
essay powerfully and in point-blank way states 
what theosophy really is. The book ought to 
be widely distributed 



6 Introduction 

The organizations for the promulgation of 
theosophy are multiplying, and the best an- 
tidote for the poison are these " leaves of the 
tree of life " presented by our eminent Baptist 
brother. A brilliant contrast is drawn out be- 
tween theosophy and Christianity. No one will 
rise from the perusal of this book without an 
increasing admiration for our glorious Christi- 
anity, which has done so much for the world, 
and will yet by the power of the Spirit redeem 
all nations. 

I am glad that Rev. Mr. Haldeman has 
added to his efficient work in the pulpit this 
potent essay on theosophy. 



THEOSOPHY OR CHRISTIANITY 
A CONTRAST 

By Rev. I. M. HALDEMAN 



For there shall arise false Christs, and 
false prophets, and shall shew great signs 
and wonders ; insomuch that, if it were pos- 
sible, they shall deceive the very elect. 

Behold, i have told you before. 

Wherefore if they shall say unto you, 
Behold, he is in the desert ; go not forth : 
behold, he is in the secret chambers ; believe 

IT NOT. 

Matt. xxiv. 24-26. 



PREFACE. 



S a pastor engaged in active work, the 



± author of this little book found himself 
coming continually into contact with questions 
about Theosophy. He felt it necessary to 
meet those questions. This he tried to do in 
a sermon delivered to his people. The sermon 
has passed into the book. 

The pith and substance only of theosophy 
have been given ; no attempt has been made 
to discuss it. The wish has been, rather, 
that, shorn of its scientific, metaphysic, and 
philosophic pretensions, it might be seen in 
all its native ugliness and repulsiveness. No 
attempt has been made to defend Christianity. 
It has been placed simply in open contrast to 




io Preface. 

theosophy, in the confidence that if any earn- 
est seeker after truth should so behold them 
he would turn in horror from the dark thing 
that wears the hooded asp to that cross where 
the serpent is smitten, and from whence the 
light of God's victory falls into the empty 
grave, and beyond that to the presence of 
the Risen Man. 

I. M. Haldeman. 

New York City, December, 1893. 



THEOSOPHY OR CHRISTIANITY— 
WHICH? 



Philology. 



HEOSOPHY, as a word, is 
compounded from the Greek 
©sog, God, and aocpoc, wis- 
dom — @soao<pia (Theoso- 
phia), wisdom about God, 
rather, wisdom of the " gods " — and is called 
by its followers " the wisdom religion.'' 




Origin. 

As a religion it is as old, perhaps, as 
time. Its birthplace, as of other religions, is 
the East. 



12 Theosophy or Christianity 



Present Sphere. 

Its present sphere of vital action is the West. 
Its vitality and vigor, amid the reaches of 
Western thought, are all the more marked be- 
cause of its lethargy and almost death in the 
land from which it originates. 

Causes for Present Activity. 

Its manifestation in this Western arena is 
due, in large measure, to the disloyalty in doc- 
trine of some who call themselves leaders and 
teachers in the Christian Church, and to the 
disloyalty in life of many who profess to be the 
followers of Christ. 

Many Christian teachers and thinkers have 
practically set aside the eschatology of the 
Christian faith, denied the resurrection as re- 
corded in The Book, and left in doubt and 



Theosophy or Christianity 13 

darkness the horoscope of the future. The 
main effort of these teachers has been to incul- 
cate a code of ethics for to-day, and carefully 
to exclude any doctrine which might lead the 
believer into the realm of the supernatural; 
while the great rank and file of the Christian 
Church, by their lives and practices, have be- 
come so thoroughly the advocates of a mere 
fleshly Christianity, that they have, in great 
degree, in the eyes of unbelievers at least, 
denied the doctrine of regeneration, or the 
coming in of a divine and spiritual life. 



The Cry for Light. 

But man is so constituted that, as he strug- 
gles with the perplexities of life, he feels con- 
tinually the need of something within that shall 
be diviner and stronger than his natural self, 
and as he approaches the grave he cries out for 
light. He would know, positively, what is in 



14 Theosophy or Christianity 

store for him beyond the gates — whether a 
dreamless and eternal sleep, or the waking to 
a larger and fuller life. 



An Answer from the East. 

Theosophy, or the wisdom religion, claims to 
meet these needs and answer these questions. 

Evidently the first thing required of theoso- 
phy is, that it shall define the constitution and 
character of God, and the relation which he 
sustains to man. 

Pantheism. 

When that definition is laid bare, it reveals 
to us an impersonal force, an impersonal 
thought, permeating and interpenetrating all 
things, so that God is all, and all is God; in 
other words, pantheism pure and simple ; and 
that pantheism is the doctrine of theosophy at 



Theosophy or Christianity 15 

the core, is the declaration of one of its preem- 
inent and eloquent teachers. In her little book 
entitled " Why I Became a Theosophist," on 
page 19, Mrs. Annie Besant says: " The next 
matter impressed on the student of theosophy 
is the denial of a personal God. In theology, 
theosophy is pantheistic — God is all, and all is 
Godr 

That is to say, the universe is a mode of 
existence. The stone rolling down the moun- 
tain-side ; the brook babbling on its idle way ; 
the bird, in flight, flinging forth its expanding 
notes from the lips of song ; the flash of a dy- 
ing star — all this is God. Not God behind all 
these things, distinct from all these things, 
sending them forth with an intelligent aim to 
do his will, but very God himself ; so that to 
touch the stone, or bathe in the water, or feel 
the ear smitten with the song, or catch the rays 
of the starry light, is to touch and come into 
contact with the actual God. 



1 6 Theosophy or Christianity 



And what is Man? 

After the definition as to God there must 
follow the definition as to man, and the relation 
which he sustains to God. 

Man is a septenary being. He consists of one 
spirit, three souls, a life principle, and two bodies. 

The spirit is that atom which is indivisible, 
imperishable; the primate and the ultimate of 
all things, visible and invisible. 

The soul is a trinity in unity. It is spiritual, 
human, animal. 

The spiritual soul is Buddhi. 

The human soul is Manas, or mind. 

The animal soul is Kama, or desire. 

The human soul is the mind, the ego. It 
has a higher and lower individuality. The 
higher, through Buddhi, is in affinity with the 
spirit. The lower is in affinity with the animal 
soul, or desire. 

The animal soul is desire. It is the emo- 



Theosophy or Christianity 17 

tional force which directs the operation and use 
of organic functions. It is the impulse which 
leads the individual to feel hunger and thirst, 
and thus sets in motion the relation of organs 
and conditions which sustain life. It is the 
impulse which leads man blindly, involuntarily, 
to propagate life and multiply his own species. 
It is pure passion, in greater or less degree 
of accent. 

The body, while seeming to be one, is in 
reality two. The outward and appearing one 
is called the physical body; the inward and 
ordinarily invisible one is known as the astral 
body. 

The principle of vitality is Prana. Prana 
means, simply, " breath.' ' It has no personal- 
ity or qualities in itself, but gains both by its 
relation to matter and modes of force. 

The physical body is, at death, soon decom- 
posed, and returns to its constituent elements. 
So does the astral body ; but, as it existed be- 



1 8 Theosophy or Christianity 

fore birth, and was the model of the physical 
body, it may exist for a while after death, and 
be the shadowy continuance of the person who 
died. It hovers over the dead body ; and those 
who watch it intently may, perhaps, see it at 
midnight, lingering above the place of sepul- 
ture, in the lonely graveyard. 

Spooks. 

The animal soul continues to exist with a 
certain degree of vitality and entity until a 
definite stage is reached, in which it is sepa- 
rated from the ego and becomes what is known 
familiarly asa u spook," a wandering, irrational 
thing, seeking to find indwelling in mediums 
and highly supersensitive earthly organizations. 

The mind, the ego, the personality, contin- 
ues to pass onward ; but as God, the sum total 
of all things, is impersonal, it is evident that 
personality is not the highest end nor the great- 



Theosophy or Christianity 19 

est good; the highest end, the greatest good, 
must be impersonality, or union and rest in the 
great total of impersonal " thought-force." The 
individual, the ego, therefore, in order to stand 
in right relation with God, becomes, at last, like 
a grain of salt dropped into the wide sea — the 
distinctive saline quality not lost, but the form 
and individual angle perished forever in the 
measureless waves — a state which is called 
Nirvana. 

In this great journey from the sum total 
called God, back to the sum total of God, cer- 
tain logical conditions and positive operations 
are necessary, which formulate themselves for 
comprehension in definite doctrines. 

The Doctrine of Karma. 

The first distinctive doctrine is called Karma. 
Karma is defined by theosophists, very fre- 
quently, as the law that " whatsoever a man 



20 Theosophy or Christianity 

soweth that shall he also reap." It is called 
retributive justice, law and sequence. 

Stripped of its verbiage, Karma is the iron 
law of a remorseless necessity, the fatality of 
unchanging and unchangeable force, the great 
broad wheel of Juggernaut, turning around and 
rolling on and over everything which is pros- 
trate before it. 

There is no possibility of setting Karma 
aside. There is only one thing you can do in 
respect to Karma, and that is, submit to it. 
According to Mrs. Besant, Karma teaches the 
acceptance, without murmuring, of inevitable 
suffering. Karma italicizes character at the 
hour of death, and eventually and logically 
brings to that threshold. 

Kama=loca. 

Through death we are introduced to the 
second doctrine of theosophy, the doctrine of 

Kama-loca. 



Theosophy or Christianity 21 

Kama is the animal soul, desire ; loca, the 
subjective state or place in which the animal 
soul finds itself after death. The animal soul 
finds itself here in company with the souls of 
brute beasts — everything, in fact, that had a 
physical and organized existence. 

Under certain conditions, as already inti- 
mated, the animal soul can assume objective 
form, by coming into contact with certain 
mediumistic organizations. It is a wandering, 
immaterial, irresponsible thing, having left in it 
some bits and fragments of its former earth 
state, when in relation to the ego. 

Devachan. 

But the ego itself passes on into another and 
equally subjective state. The state is known 
as Devachan, and means literally " the abode of 
the gods." It is the abode of the higher ego, 
the spiritual soul. It is a place of dreams. To 
use the language of a theosophist, " Devachan 



22 Theosophy or Christianity 

is really a state of delusion " ; and Madam Bla- 
vatsky, in her work entitled " The Key to 
Theosophy," illustrates the state by supposing 
a mother to have just died and left behind her, 
on earth, two orphan children. That mother, 
passing over from Kama-loca into Devachan, 
commences at once to dream that her children 
are with her — in fact, that she has never left 
them. Devachan, therefore, is the theoso- 
phist's heaven ; a dream, an illusion, a delusion, 
a happy delusion, something which appears to 
be true, but is absolutely untrue, unreal, unex- 
istent — in short, a heaven of hallucination. 

Reincarnation. 

After the ego has spent a longer or shorter 
time in Devachan, according to the law and" 
operation of its Kama, it begins to pass out of 
that state; it begins to awake. As the first 
thing we think of on awakening is, what clothes 



Theosophy or Christianity 23 

we shall put on, so the first thing the ego 
thinks about on awakening is, what body it 
shall put on; and then, suddenly, to use the 
expression of a theosophist, " it finds itself 
drawn into a psychic vortex produced by the 
relation of the sexes, becomes re-incarnate, and 
is born into the world again in another human 
body." 

This is the doctrine of re-incarnation. Re- 
incarnation is a necessity. It is a necessity in 
order that the ego may work out its Karma 
and attain to all knowledge, through successive 
human experience. Thus re-incarnation will be 
higher or lower according to the previous earth 
life, and in strict accordance with Karma, that 
whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also 
reap. 

Sex Uncertain. 

In re-incarnation the matter of sex is not 
arbitrary. A man may be re-incarnated as a 



24 Theosophy or Christianity 

woman: a woman may be re-incarnated as a 
man. 

According to Alexander Fullerton, a fellow 
of the Theosophical Society, in his pamphlet 
" Topics in Re-incarnation/' page 17, "John 
Smith, who was vigorous and self-reliant, may 
reappear as Mary Jones, timid, weak, and de- 
pendent. Sarah Thompson, a refined and cul- 
tivated gentlewoman, may come back as a 
burly, pushing, not over-scrupulous politician.'' 
Catherine of Russia and Joan of Arc are cited 
in support of this proposition, their vigorous 
and warlike spirits bearing witness that in some 
former earth state they were hardy men and 
aggressive warriors. 

The doctrine fairly explains the phenomena 
of masculine spirits in female bodies, and female 
spirits in masculine bodies. It also elucidates 
the question as to why the wife sometimes 
occupies the public platform and the husband 
guards the quiet and unobtrusive seclusion of 



Theosophy or Christianity 25 

the home, or why, when he goes abroad, he is 
pointed out as the husband of Madam Strong- 
mind. 

This system of re-incarnation has already 
passed through four distinct races. We are at 
present in the fourth round or cycle of the fifth 
race. There are yet to be two distinct races. 
The sixth is to be, and is now being evolved in 
this land. We have all of us, already, there- 
fore, been born into this world many times, 
and passed through the varied experiences of 
alternating sex. 

And to this Complexion! 

Some of us who are now fathers of families 
may have been fruitful and worthy mothers. 
That strong and vigorous mother may have 
been a hardy and determined father ; this staid 
and uncompromising matron may have been a 
ballet-dancer in Pompeii ; and this elusive-look- 



26 Theosophy or Christianity 

ing gentleman may have practiced the light- 
fingered art in the cupboards of Caesar. We 
may have had our souls keyed to the noblest 
hopes, or tortured with basest passions. 

Nor is this all : we must be re-incarnated 
again millions and millions of times, in revolving 
sex, in continually changing conditions, from 
profoundest joy to keenest sorrow, from munif- 
icent wealth to abject squalor, passing through 
ranges of utter comedy or the voiceless anguish 
of sunless tragedy. This is the doctrine 
of re-incarnation. This is the great " pearl 
doctrine of theosophy " — the doctrine which is 
expected to wipe away tears from sorrowing 
eyes, bring peace to troubled hearts, and gild 
the to-morrow with the aurora of hope. 



How Sarah Thompson will like it. 



Sarah Thompson will feel particularly en- 
couraged at the thought of coming back in the 



Theosophy or Christianity 27 

role of a roistering politician ; and the refined 
and cultivated gentleman will no doubt comfort 
himself, even now, with his future possibilities 
when he may return as a day-laborer or a com- 
mon scullion ; while the man of wealth cannot 
but anticipate the value of his experiences 
when in his new re-incarnation he shall eat 
the bread of charity and drink the waters of 
affliction. 

Annihilation. 

When the last round of the last race shall be 
made, and when the ego shall attain to that 
condition where it can remember all its past 
re-incarnations, and can recall all the incidents 
and feelings of each separate consciousness on 
earth, and shall have attained to the full knowl- 
edge in all its aspects of principle and law in 
each separate experience, it will then enter into 
the eternal and final all, and become an inte- 



28 Theosophy or Christianity 

gral part of the great abyss of impersonality 
called God. 

This is the doctrine of Nirvana, which, in 
spite of Oriental imagery, is the plain and sim- 
ple English for annihilation. 

The Mahatmas. 

From whence does theosophy draw its au- 
thority for these wonderful doctrines? 

From a class of men called Mahatmas, mas- 
ters, great souls, men who live in middle Asia, 
somewhere in Thibet, in secret chambers of a 
cave-hewn temple, inaccessible except to the 
initiates themselves. 

They have passed through countless re-incar- 
nations, and each separate and particular expe- 
rience. They have had the good fortune, some 
of them, to be re-incarnated in the same race, 
and many times. They possess the secrets of 
nature. They are adepts in occult science. 
Who has seen them? 



Theosophy or Christianity 29 

Colonel Olcott, of New York, saw one of 
them. The Mahatma suddenly appeared to 
him in his room, and then went back to Thibet, 
even as he came, in a moment of time ; and in 
order that Colonel Olcott might know that it 
was not an optical illusion, he left his India- 
cotton handkerchief with mystic initials em- 
broidered in the corner. 

That Picnic! 

One of these Mahatmas appeared to Madam 
Blavatsky. She, with some friends, formed a 
picnic party on a certain occasion. When the 
time came to sit down to the luncheon it was 
discovered that, although there were seven in 
the company, there were only six cups and 
saucers — a situation, beyond question, exceed- 
ingly embarrassing for the seventh person with 
a taste for tea. One of the friends suggested, 
in a half playful sort of a way, that it would be 
a good opportunity to call on one of the Ma- 



30 Theosophy or Christianity 

hatmas and test the depths of occult powers. 
Madam Blavatsky gracefully acceded to the 
request, acknowledging, however, that the task 
was somewhat difficult, and she would not, 
under the circumstances, guarantee the result. 

She went apart some distance from the 
rest, and persuasively called a Mahatma. The 
brother, being of a thoroughly courteous and 
obliging spirit, came at once, although there 
were leagues on leagues of mountain heights 
and valleys and stormy seas to cross. The 
madam communicated to him the difficulties 
of the now all-absorbing question of tea. He 
suggested that she send one of the party to 
dig under a neighboring bush. Madam Bla- 
vatsky repeated the suggestion. Some one 
took a case-knife and commenced to dig in 
the indicated spot. After a few moments' 
digging he struck something hard; he laid it 
bare, and discovered a cup imbedded in the 
ground ; with great difficulty he loosened it 



Theosophy or Christianity 31 

from the clinging roots. When washed, it was 
found that the cup was precisely of the same 
pattern as the other six. But a cup without a 
saucer — what is that to those whose interests 
are guarded by a brother from Thibet? The 
knife was again put in requisition; again some- 
thing hard was struck, and this time it proved 
to be a saucer, which, on washing, was found 
to match the cup. The company at once sat 
down to the uninterrupted enjoyment of their 
tea. 

The whole business was so straightforward, 
the transaction was so impromptu, that it never 
occurred to any of them, even for a moment, 
that they had assisted at a spectacle of the 
magic art or sleight of hand. 

No Occupation for Reporters. 

A Chicago reporter with persistent discour- 
tesy, it is said, inquired at the last meeting in 



32 Theosophy or Christianity 

that inquisitive city why the Mahatmas did not 
visit this country openly, and let everybody see 
them ; and he was told kindly, but firmly, that 
the Mahatmas were not open to the methods 
of the modern interviewer. Mrs. Besant says 
that the Mahatmas are not anxious for personal 
introduction, and Madam Blavatsky claims that 
the world is not yet able to recognize them ; 
while Walter R. Old, in his work entitled 
"What is Theosophy ?" page 96, says: "The 
Mahatmas cannot be seen with the naked eye. 
A Mahatma can be seen only by those who 
have attained to the same plane of conscious- 
ness.' ' 

And this is theosophy ! 

The Issue Joined. 

Over against this deliverance of theosophy 
let us place the conceptions of the Christian 
faith. 



Theosophy or Christianity 33 



A Personal God. 

Against this doctrine of an impersonal God 
made up of aggregate impersonal atoms, who 
cannot see or feel or hear, who has no sympa- 
thy, no love, no hate, no thought, let us place 
the Christian idea of a Supreme Being ab extra 
to creation, with an eye to see, an ear to 
hear, a heart to feel, a love to express, a sym- 
pathy to unfold, so that, wherever the troubled 
soul may be, whether beneath Orient skies or 
Western suns, on mountain heights, in lonely 
vales or midnight seas, surrounded by laughter 
or girdled with pain, that soul can look up 
through all clouds and tears and cry out with 
full assurance — assurance that the moan and 
the plaint will be heard — " My Father and my 
God," and hear that Father answer back, " My 
son." A God and Father who reveals himself 
incarnate in all the grace and truth of Jesus 
Christ. 



34 Theosophy or Christianity 



An Interposing Providence. 

Over against the doctrine of Karma, or blind 
fatalism, place the doctrine of a divine and 
interfering Providence, with its correlate of 
prayer — that prayer which is divine energy 
throbbing in the heart, and going back to the 
God from whence it came ; that doctrine which 
enables the soul to pour itself out before God, 
and enables God, in obedience to the strict law 
of righteousness, to give deliverance to that 
soul, in as marked and occult a way as any ever 
wrought by Mahatma, or adept. 

Not Hallucination, but Heaven. 

Over against the doctrine of Devachan, or a 
heaven of illusory dreams, contrast the Chris- 
tian doctrine of a spirit, an intelligent spirit, 
absent from the body, at home with the Lord, 



Theosophy or Christianity 35 

in unison with his body, at rest in him, and, 
with clear-eyed consciousness, seeing the end 
from the beginning, comprehending all mys- 
teries, finding the evil, in many cases, but the 
"good out of sight," and beholding the sure 
daylight at the close of any darkest night of 
earth. 

Regeneration. 

Over against the cheerless, painful, pilgrim- 
age doctrine of re-incarnation let there be placed 
the twofold doctrine of regeneration and resur- 
rection. First the doctrine of regeneration, or 
soul resurrection — the rising up of the soul 
out of the grave of moral corruption; its de- 
liverance from death in trespass and sin ; the 
quickening of the human soul by the divine 
Spirit, kindling in that soul a pure and holy 
flame, endowing it with a new and spiritual 
mind, impelling it by exalted and heavenly 
motives, strengthening and uplifting its person- 



36 Theosophy or Christianity 

ality, so that the man who is regenerated is still 
the original ego, and can say, "I am he that 
was blind and dead ; and now / am he that 
doth live and see." 

Resurrection. 

In the second place, over against re-incarna- 
tion set the doctrine of the resurrection — the 
rising up of the body out of the grave. Not 
the rising up of the same dead body, but the 
germination from a seed in that dead body ; 
from that dead body, itself considered as a seed, 
of a new and higher organism for the spiritual- 
ized ego. A pneumatic body for the pneumatic 
ego. 

"I" shall be "I." 

Over against this doctrine of a compound 
personality, and many bodies of confused and 
alternating sex, consider the masterful doctrine 



Theosophy or Christianity 37 

of a present and abiding personality in an im- 
mortal, glorious, and divine body. 

Over against the doctrine of absorption and 
final annihilation let there be seen in fullest 
contrast the doctrine of a perfect man, endowed 
with all knowledge and power; a brotherhood 
of divine men, the visible sons of the invisible 
God, ascending through all cycles to unending 
joys and unspeakable bliss; a future of love 
and light and gracious knowledge one of an- 
other, common in life and glory, but distinct in 
personality, so that through all ages and un- 
counted eons " I " shall be " I" and "you" 
shall be "you," ruling in the splendor of 
human yet divine power over a regenerated 
and perfect world. 

The Sure Word. 

Over against the mysticism, the uncertain- 
ty, and downright folly of Mahatmic tradition 



38 Theosophy or Christianity 

about sacred volumes and sacred chambers let 
there be set forth this Bible, the Word of the 
living God — the book which ages before Christ 
foretold all the details of his birth, crucifixion, 
and death ; foretold the destruction of Nineveh, 
Babylon, Tyre, and Sidon, almost before their 
foundation-stones were laid; foretold the his- 
tory of the Jews unto this latest day, so clearly, 
so accurately, that no historian can gainsay or 
improve it. 

A book that has outlived all the attacks 
against it. A book that does not hide itself in 
secret chambers, but comes forth into the open 
light, speaks to-day in over two hundred lan- 
guages and dialects, and, flinging wide its 
pages, cries, ff Come and see; " " Come and 
investigate me;" u Come and test me." 

A book that can speak so simply that the 
most elemental mind may comprehend it, or so 
profoundly that the most complex intellect may 
not outreach it. 



Theosophy or Christianity 39 



The Sunlit Faith. 

In short, over against this religion which 
teaches that through painful self-discipline, 
countless ages of re-incarnation, unspeakable 
sufferings, dramas and tragedies, the bewildered 
soul shall at last find peace in annihilation, let 
there be seen in its shining contrast the incom- 
parable teaching that the moment any soul of 
earth believes on the Lord Jesus Christ he is 
forgiven of sins, the iron law of retribution is 
set aside, he is lifted beyond the pain and peril 
of punishment, and made one with God, as a 
son is made one with the father, in the oneness 
and unity of inseparable love. 

The Man in the Glory. 

Let the wondrous, soul-thrilling truth be 
proclaimed, that in yonder heaven, in some 
shining superior world, there is a glorified, im- 
mortal man, the very fullness of the Godhead 



40 Theosophy or Christianity 

bodily ; the pleroma of deity, who has passed 
through all mortal experiences: whose brow 
was crowned with human sorrow ; whose cheeks 
were darkened with the shadows of woe ; whose 
body was clothed with weariness and pain; 
whose soul met continually the hunger of re- 
jected love; whose feet were pressed against 
the sharp angles of disappointment; whose 
form was bowed beneath the weight of a 
world's weakness and wrong; whose death was 
the mighty cataclysm of human sin and divine 
wrath ; whose resurrection and ascension were 
the proclamation of the beginning of a new and 
immortal manhood ; and who is living now in 
highest heaven, as the prophecy and prototype 
of what the Christian believer shall be when he 
shall come forth in the glory of the " First 
Resurrection." 

Listen to the blessed and consoling truth 
that when a Christian dies he is done forever- 
more with pain and tears, and enters into 



Theosophy or Christianity 41 

peaceful and conscious rest, till the cloudless 
morning shall bring him within the " cycle " of 
his glorious resurrection, and his second and 
final incarnation — that hour over which the 
heaven voices shall sing and say, " There shall 
be no more sorrow nor crying, nor any more 
pain or dying, for, behold, the former things are 
passed away." 

Compare Christianity thus with theosophy, 
and theosophy flees away as a monstrous 
mass of nebulous clouds before the steady 
shining of the sun. 

From the Mummies and the Jungles. 

And in the steady shining of the Christian 
sun all the lands, where theosophy was born 
and has taught and wrought, lie open to our 
gaze, and cry out to us. Egypt, from her 
mummies and her tombs, India, from her land 
of caste and tribal degradation, cry out to us : 



42 Theosophy or Christianity 

" Look at us, and see what theosophy has 
wrought, and judge it, O ye sons of men, by 
its fruits." 

And These are Thine, O Theosophy ! 

We look, and we see, with painful clearness, 
what theosophy has wrought. 

We see that in Egypt it led men eventually 
to bow down before bulls and dogs and cats 
and leeks and garlic, and call them gods, as the 
very Karma, the very Nemesis, the very logic 
of its fatal premise that " all is God, and God 
is all." 

We see that in India it led men to separate 
themselves into caste, and cultivate the law 
of suspicion, selfishness, and repulsion, as the 
legitimate result of the operation of the prin- 
ciples of that doctrine of re-incarnation which 
makes each succeeding reappearance depend 
for its quality on the strictness with which men 
keep themselves from contamination here. 



Theosophy or Christianity 43 

It taught men, in the name of Karma, to fold 
their hands in the face of pestilence and disas- 
ter, and to sit down in blind, unreasoning fatal- 
ism while the jungle grass grew about their 
doors or invaded their rice- fields. 

It led men to turn away from the science 
of government and the amelioration of society, 
and spend their swift-flying days in cultivat- 
ing jugglery, mesmerism, and hypnotism, as the 
demonstration of coveted Mahatmic powers. 

We see that it led the spirit of retrogression 
to hold back the hands on the dial-plate of 
progress in every nation that it entered. 

It led those nations to hold an esoteric or 
secret doctrine for the few, and an exoteric or 
public doctrine for the vulgar many. 

It talked in its secret councils of the laws of 
nature, and in public let the poor fools clutch 
at signs and symbols, and, at the last, fall down 
to embrace them as their gods. And it talks 
wisely now, does theosophy ; but the ending of 



44 Theosophy or Christianity 

its speech is to cut away the only anchorage 
which keeps this poor world moored to reason 
and to hope, and let it drift back into the black 
night of metaphysical darkness and stoical de- 
spair. 

Intellectual Paradoxes. 

Theosophy denies Christian evidences, sets 
aside Christian miracles, and laughs at Christian 
credulity, yet gravely talks about human bodies 
floating in the air, about spirits leaving the 
body, going to Thibet, holding converse with 
Mahatmas, and coming back to New York in a 
moment of time. 

It talks with circumstantial precision of a 
great crowd of spirits seen during a summer 
shower, after a flash of lightning, to pass out of 
the bosom of one cloud into another, across the 
face of the shifting sky. 

It talks about the inaccuracy of Holy Scrip- 
ture, hesitates to base its confidence on a 



Theosophy or Christianity 45 

"Thus saith the Lord," and yet will cast aside 
the testimony of this verified Book, and build 
the soul's hope of the future on the declaration 
that a seventh cup and a seventh saucer were 
found buried under a bush, or that a certain 
individual found a cotton cloth with mysterious 
symbols on it, and says that a Mahatma came 
sailing through the night air, and without even 
a broom, to make him a present of it. 

It makes light of and condemns our Western 
philosophy, because the latter reasons always 
from effect to cause, from seen to unseen, from 
known to unknown ; and yet its very literature 
confesses, in amplest form, that in this same 
Western land it has greater liberty and freer 
thought than in any other land. 

The Tree on which this Wisdom doth Grow. 

This "wisdom religion" comes to-day from 
India, the land of overcrowded populations and 



46 Theosophy or Christianity 

caste and suspicion, thuggery, jugglery, and the 
burning of women alive upon the funeral-pyres 
of their husbands {till Christianity stepped in 
and stopped it). It comes from the land of ox- 
carts instead of railways, and serpent- charming 
instead of telegraphs and telephones. 

And What it Finds There. 

It comes to this land, and finds paper and ink 
and type and printing-presses to print its meta- 
physical and mystical literature, and finds con- 
fronting it civilization, culture, refinement, and 
the individualism of life guarded and taken care 
of by law and society, until a murderer and a 
vagabond have no place among us even to 
hide. It finds that the hand mastering the 
withered, shriveled East, and giving to it its 
only hope of life among the nations, is a hand 
thrust out of our glowing, magnificent, imperial 
West in the name of God and his crucified and 
risen Christ. 



Theosophy or Christianity 47 



And yet it Asks This, 

Theosophy wants us to give up this Book 
which has knocked down and overthrown its 
idols, revealed its Eleusinian mysteries, torn 
aside the veils from its temples of Delphos, 
exposed the secrets of its singing statues of 
Memnon, and banished the sin and the shame 
which, in the palmy days of its power, held 
high carnival in the name of the priests and 
priestesses of nature. 

Theosophy asks us to give up this Book for 
a system that has robbed the world for ages of 
the knowledge of the true God. 

Theosophy asks us to go out into the wide 
sea, beyond the gates of death, on the broken 
spar of a metaphysical guess, and it would con- 
sole us, as we go, with some cabalistic sign, 
some Pythagorean number, or some talismanic 
phrase ; then, at the moment of our keenest cry 



48 Theosophy or Christianity 

for light, plunge us in the rayless darkness of 
an endless night. 

Who is at the Bottom of it? 

And now, when it is known that one of the 
objects of the Theosophical Society is, accord- 
ing to Madam Blavatsky herself, to disseminate 
in India, among the heathen, reports of sins 
and crimes committed by clergymen and pro- 
fessed Christians, to let the Eastern world see 
that Christianity is full of schism and contro- 
versy, discontent and waning power, that an- 
other of its objects is to show the heathen that 
missionaries are not liked at home, and are of 
no good abroad; when it is remembered that 
theosophy denies the blood of atonement and 
salvation by grace — there need be no great 
difficulty in comprehending who is at the bot- 
tom of and who has inspired theosophy. And 
when we hear theosophists talking complacently 
about "spooks," "gods," "woodland sprites," 



Theosophy or Christianity 49 

and "gnomes," claiming Christ as a Mahatma, 
an adept, a master, quoting the very words of 
the living Scriptures to sustain the doctrine 
of re-incarnation, and even attempting to show 
that, in many respects, Christianity is but a de- 
generate shade of theosophic expression, we can 
see with what an eye to the eternal fitness of 
things one of the magazines of the Theosoph- 
ical Society is published under the name and 
title of " Lucifer," and with what fitness it 
prints upon its books, and stamps upon its 
pamphlets, the old-time device of the hooded 
asp of Egypt, and talks of the mystic serpent, 
or speaks of the god Sat-AN as the god of 
wisdom and of power. 

At last, the Serpent ! 

Who can doubt it ? 

Theosophy, the " wisdom religion," is indeed 
the wisdom of that mysterious being whom all 



50 Theosophy or Christianity 

ages have worshiped and obeyed, under one 
form or another, and who in the East is called 
the god Sat- AN, but whom the Word of God 
reveals as " that Old Serpent which is called 
the Devil and Satan." 

After deliberate investigation, close study, 
and some knowledge of occult science, we are 
ready unhesitatingly to affirm that theosophy 
is one of the masterpieces of satanic wisdom in 
these latter days. 

It is his effort to clothe himself in light, to 
show that he is indeed, in the best sense, Luci- 
fer, "The light-bearer,' ' to speak with the glib 
tongue of scientific speech, and, behind the 
pretense of universal brotherhood and personal 
worth, deceive the souls of men to their final 
doom. 

Yes! Satan has commenced, once more, to 
walk to and fro in the earth among the sons of 
God ; and as we see theosophy, with its twin 
sisters, PANTHEISM and Atheism ; as we hear 



Theosophy or Christianity 5 1 

its half-concealed little laugh, its mocking hiss, 
at the name of Jesus and the mention of the 
Blood; as we read on the last page of Mad- 
am Blavatsky's book, " The Key to Theoso- 
phy," that at the close of the twentieth century 
a great Mahatma, a great master, is to come, 
who will reveal the truth, solve all mysteries, 
and lead into perfect peace; that he will not 
dwell in the cities, nor breathe the air of their 
pollution, but that he will dwell alone, in Des- 
ert Places, in Secret Chambers of moun- 
tain caverns — then may we surely know that 
we are entering on that solemn and pregnant 
hour of which the Son of Man himself fore- 
told when he said : " There shall arise False 
Christs, and False Prophets, and shall 
show Great Signs and Wonders ; insomuch 
that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the 
very elect;" and who furthermore said: "I 
have told you before. Wherefore if they shall 
say unto you, Behold, he is in the DESERT ; go 



52 Theosophy or Christianity 

not forth : Behold, he is in the SECRET CHAM- 
BERS; believe it not." 

For Christ Cometh! 

Believe it not, for in a moment, when least 
expected, the True Master, God's Son, will 
come, as the lightning which lighteneth out of 
heaven, to deal with the world according to the 
way in which it has dealt with Him. 



THE END. 



dm 



